Globalove Think Tank

I dream of a Star Trek world. This think tank will focus on creative actions
designed to initiate a global paradigm shift towards a world where racism, poverty
and war will be a thing of the past.

Category: corruption

newt


GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich says poor kids should start working at jobs as early as elementary school. “Child laws,” Gingrich said, “are truly stupid.”

Where would he begin? “Most of these schools ought to get rid of the unionized janitors,” the former House speaker said, “have one master janitor and pay local students to take care of the school.” Liberals have criticized that idea for insulting janitors and reinstating child exploitation.

One can challenge the factuality of Gingrich’s premise that “really poor children in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works” and disfavor employment “unless it’s illegal.” Three-fourths of America’s poor work. Given the critical lack of jobs in inner cities and isolated rural areas, it’s difficult to argue that the real problem is poor people’s —or their children’s — lassitude or penchant for crime. (politico.com)

U.S. Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich thrust himself into controversy on Friday by declaring that the Palestinians are an “invented” people who want to destroy Israel.

The former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives predictably sided with Israel in its decades-old dispute with the Palestinians but took it a step further in an interview with the Jewish Channel.

Gingrich differed with official U.S. policy that respects the Palestinians as a people deserving of their own state based on negotiations with Israel.

“Remember, there was no Palestine as a state. It was part of the Ottoman Empire” until the early 20th century, Gingrich said.

“I think that we’ve had an invented Palestinian people who are in fact Arabs, and who were historically part of the Arab community. And they had a chance to go many places, and for a variety of political reasons we have sustained this war against Israel now since the 1940s, and it’s tragic,” he said.

Gingrich said he would be willing to consider granting clemency to Jonathan Jay Pollard, who has been serving a life prison term since 1987 for passing U.S. secrets to Israel. Successive U.S. presidents have refused Israeli entreaties to free him. (haaretz.com)

Are you stupid ???

99%

nonviolent direct action

Nonviolent direct action seeks to

create such a crisis and foster such a

tension that a community which has

constantly refused to negotiate is

forced to confront the issue. It seeks

to so dramatize the issue that it can

no longer be ignored.

…Martin Luther King Jr…
4/16/63


a love story

the american dream

the american dream

it’s not a recession…it’s a robbery!

end the fed

It is well enough

that people of the nation

do not understand our banking and monetary system,

for if they did,

I believe there would be

a revolution before tomorrow morning.

…Henry Ford…

The Money Changers

the fox is guarding the hen house



There can be no effective control of corporations while their political activity remains….Theodore Roosevelt, speech, August 31, 1910

There’s a side to regulation that most people don’t think about, and it has far-reaching effects if representatives of corporations are writing the rules. Once a regulation is passed saying, “you can emit no more than 10 ppm [parts per million] of mercury,” you can legally emit up to 10 ppm.

Before that rule was passed, any amount you emitted might subject you to potential lawsuits from nearby humans made ill by your emissions, by other states, or even by the federal government.

The regulatory rule essentially legalizes what a corporation is doing. In the best of worlds, this wouldn’t be a problem. But in practice it means that business interests are often directly involved in writing the regulations that they themselves will have to obey.

Regulations Can Legalize Activity That Causes Public Harm

During the Reagan administration, Robert Monks and Nell Minow worked with the Presidential Task Force on Regulatory Relief. Monks says, “We found that business representatives continually sought more rather than less regulation, particularly when [the new regulations] would limit their liability or protect them from competition.”

Monks and Minow became disenchanted with the process. In their 1991 book Power and Accountability, they say, “The ultimate commercial accomplishment is to achieve regulation under law that is purported to be comprehensive and preempting and is administered by an agency that is in fact captive to the industry.” In this way corporations find an actual government shield for their actions. For example:

• Tobacco companies point to the government-mandated warnings on their labels, saying that the labels relieve them of responsibility for tobacco-related deaths because they’re obeying government rules.

• Producers of toxic wastes can’t be sued or attacked if they are releasing their toxins within guidelines defined by a government agency.

• Telemarketing companies push for laws and regulations that define their practice, thus legalizing it.

• Manufacturers of genetically modified products can bring them to market without labeling, so long as the products are made within the guide- lines of the regulations. (read more)

money, money, money

http://usdebt.kleptocracy.us/

http://www.usdebtclock.org/

Heartless Moneymaking Organization

watch “Sicko”

theft

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”

…Dwight D. Eisenhower…

apples and oranges

911scholars.org

pilotsfor911truth.org

firefightersfor911truth.org

Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth

The Prize

my precious

dog and pony show

secrecy is repugnant

this has to stop


December brings the biggest showdown with Illinois’ and possibly the nation’s most gluttonous corporate freeloader: the corn ethanol industry.

Symbolically, the upcoming battle of budget hawks against ethanol’s special pleaders is as significant as the fight over continuing the Bush tax cuts.

At issue is whether Congress will allow corpulent ethanol subsidies and a tariff against some imported ethanol to expire on Dec. 31. The ethanol industry has been tromping around Washington like starving bears, hoping to get the deal done during this lame-duck session of Congress, before budget-cutting hunters arrive in the next Congress.

Ethanol’s supporters assert that it is an environmentally friendly, renewable and cost-effective gasoline additive. Its opponents dispute it on every point, arguing, among other things, that ethanol costs more than gasoline to make, raises food prices, increases tailpipe pollution and encourages cultivation of fragile lands. But dare to question ethanol, which consumes 41 percent of the corn crop, and snowstorms of studies are produced, from both sides. Clearly, the science supporting ethanol is “unsettled.” Which makes spending billions of taxpayers’ and consumers’ dollars on ethanol at best a costly crapshoot.

Despite that, the Environmental Protection Agency recently decided that we aren’t consuming enough of it. Instead of mandating that 10 percent of gasoline sold at the pump be ethanol, as has been required for years, the EPA issued its so-called E15 rule, which raised to 15 percent the allowable blend of ethanol for cars and certain trucks built since 2007. In that, the EPA ignored studies pointing to the harmful effects that 50 percent increase will have on cars, including the agency’s own conclusion that it would damage the catalytic converters of tens of millions of cars now on the road.

Wait, that’s only the start. The ethanol industry also receives a tax credit amounting to 45 cents a gallon and is aided by a tariff on sugar-cane ethanol valued at 54 cents. In addition, the 2007 energy act mandates the use of renewable fuels, including ethanol: 10.5 billion gallons in 2009, 14 billion in 2011 and 36 billion by 2022.

This is extraordinary. And insane. Here, the government creates a fake market for ethanol, then subsidizes the market, and then protects the market against foreign competition.

This has to stop. But don’t count on it.

Agribusiness is an American biggie, especially in Illinois, loaded as we are with ethanol giant Archer Daniels Midland Co., commodities markets, corn farmers and countless refiners, processors, haulers and investors. Their people sit on important corporate boards and their campaign contributions flow into Congress and state legislatures. Even cost-cutters will pretend not to notice the need to carve away at this turkey, one of the most heavily subsidized businesses in America. And, I haven’t even mentioned the tens of billions of federal dollars that go for crop subsidies and other boons for wheat, cotton, sugar, peanuts, dairy, wool and other types of farmers.

Critics of these subsidies get it from the right and the left. But opposing the subsidies is a growing coalition from the right and left. Among them are the Natural Resources Defense Council, Environmental Working Group, Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council, National Petrochemical and Refiners Association, International Dairy Foods Association and Grocery Manufacturers Association. As their Web site (followthescience.org) illustrates, they are united in their opposition to the EPA’s E15 rule for a variety of environmental and economic reasons, including, no doubt, their own self-interest. The coalition earlier this month filed a federal lawsuit charging that the EPA exceeded its statutory powers by issuing the rule. (chicagotribune.com)

Our Sacred Duty

Civil disobedience…

becomes a sacred duty…

when the state has become…

lawless or corrupt.

…Mahatma Gandhi…

1984 is now

(watch 1984)

Public Campaign


Public Campaign is a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to sweeping campaign reform that aims to dramatically reduce the role of big special interest money in American politics. Public Campaign is laying the foundation for reform by working with a broad range of organizations, including local community groups, around the country that are fighting for change and national organizations whose members are not fairly represented under the current campaign finance system. Together we are building a network of national and state-based efforts to create a powerful national force for federal and state campaign reform. (read more)

blind-ness


Liu Xia, the wife of the imprisoned Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo, is under house arrest amid rising anger in Beijing over the dissident’s prize. The wife of the imprisoned Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo fears the Chinese government will prevent her from collecting the peace prize on her husband’s behalf amid rising anger in Beijing at the announcement.

In a telephone interview with the Guardian, Liu Xia said police officers had surrounded her home and warned her that she could not leave without a minder.

“They have told me not to go out, not to visit friends. If I want to see my parents or buy food, I can only go in their car,” she said. “I don’t even talk to my neighbours because I don’t want to get them into trouble.”

During a prison visit on Sunday, Liu Xiaobo asked her to collect the prize at the ceremony in Oslo, Norway, on 10 December. But she was doubtful she would get as far as the airport.

“I can’t even get out of my home, how could I go out of the country?”

The Nobel prize committee said they hoped one of the couple would attend the ceremony, but it would go ahead without the winner as it did for Burmese democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and former Polish president Lech Walesa.

The Chinese government today maintained its attack on the Nobel decision and its supporters. “If some people try to change China’s political system in this way, and try to stop the Chinese people from moving forward, that is obviously making a mistake,” the foreign ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu told the Associated Press. “This is not only disrespect for China’s judicial system, but also puts a big question mark on their true intentions.” (guardian.co.uk)

Spy House

A message to the NSA, CIA, NRO, FBI, etc….

we know you are watching…

maybe you will learn something.

Not With A Bang…

I apologise in advance to this sort-of-a-downer of a post. I believe there are some things that need to be faced head-on, with our proverbial heads out of the proverbial sand.

This is a post I hoped I would never write. As you, my readers, know, I practice the virtue of chardi kala, translated in many different ways, but all having the meaning of eternal optimism and never giving up. I am still practicing, but it is hard.

No doubt by now you have heard about the massive oil spill by British Petroleum in the Gulf of Mexico in the Caribbean Sea, truly a paradise on earth. Or at least it was until 20 April 2010. On that day the Deepwater Horizon oil rig – owned and run by British Petroleum – exploded, caught fire and began gushing massive amounts of crude oil into the pristine waters around it. Eleven were killed and 17 injured. That was tragic, but it is just the beginning.

The amount of oil gushing into the Gulf is estimated at somewhere between 1,475,000 and 4,200,000 gallons per day ( 5,583,432 and 15,828,729 liters/day). No one knows how much oil is in this well, how long it can keep gushing. Years or decades, if it is not somehow stopped. So far nothing has worked. In fact, efforts have actually made it worse.

Here’s a nice little widget to help you calculate.

Those are pretty dry figures for most people, so here’s a more graphic look. This is what the spill looks like right now (30 June 2010):

I realise that most of my readers really can’t relate to southern Louisiana, so here is the spill in other locations where I have readers:

If I happened to miss your locale, go to Ifitwasmyhome to move the spill to wherever you live.

Perhaps you’d like to see it as it happens.

If that’s not enough to bring it home to you, here are a few oil-soaked pelicans. I find this horribly painful to look at.

In addition, massive amounts of methane gas has been released into the water. This may well turn out to be even more dangerous than the oil. The methane depletes the water of oxygen, leaving all the sea life devoid of the element that is necessary to all life on earth. It is feared that the methane will cause a dead zone where nothing can live, possibly for decades. Also, scientists believe that a huge methane bubble is forming under the water. When it bursts, it could release a tsunami of 20-60 ft (6.1-18.3 m), certainly enough to engulf most of the Caribbean islands. For more information on the gas leak, go here:
Gas Leak 3000 Times Worse Than Oil.

And, by the way, with our current technology we have no way to cap or contain the methane.

I guess that’s not enough bad news. It is now hurricane season. (For those of you in Asia, those are typhoons.) There will be hurricanes. In fact, the first one is blowing right now. Hurricane Alex did not move close to the spill, but there will be another hurricane and another and another.

The next thing to consider is the ocean currents. The Gulf Stream is an ocean river that runs from the Caribbean to Europe.

Eventually this oil and methane and all their problems will reach Europe. They will also travel up the Atlantic coast of North America all the way to Canada and all points north. No one knows how much of the ocean will die. Certainly a large part of the Caribbean Sea will and it will take decades to recover. In the meantime the many people who make their livings along the Gulf, either fishing or in the tourist trade, have lost their means of livelihood. It is even possible that the land they live on will become uninhabitable. Bobby Jindal, the governor of Louisiana has been alerted that a mass evacuation may become necessary, if a hurricane again hits the state. It is likely that once gone, the people will not be allowed to return due to the toxic oil and gas along the coast.
The earth is one big ecosystem, based primarily on our oceans. If a large part of one ocean dies, that will have a cascade effect on the rest of the planet. How far could this go? Worst case scenario: Bye-bye. “Not with a bang, but a whimper.” If you don’t recognise those lines, they are the conclusion of T. S Eliot’s poem, The Hollow Men. To hear the whimper go to Power Without Petroleum and listen hard at 0:25.

Best case scenario: the southern coast of the United States becomes uninhabitable for a period of time and much of the sea life in the Gulf of Mexico dies, with devastating consequences to the people who now live there. As it is impossible that there be no hurricanes in the season, we can be sure that the winds will carry the oil throughout the region, damaging all it touches. That damage cannot be estimated at this time, except to say it will be extensive.

This morning (1 July 2010), going through my inbox, I found this article in the daily UN bulletin:

Biologists find ‘dead zones’ around BP oil spill in Gulf

Methane at 100,000 times normal levels have been creating oxygen-depleted areas devoid of life near BP’s Deepwater Horizon spill, according to two independent scientists

As long as I can remember, the scientists have been screaming “Wolf!” alerting us to this or that which they claim is going to wipe us out. As I child I grew up with “nuclear annihilation.” That was the biggie. There have been others: the hole in the ozone layer, swine flu (twice), bird flu, global climate change and I’m sure others that I have forgotten. And it seems, life causes cancer. There is truth in all these scientific assertions, but there was also something we could do to stop or at least alleviate the disaster. As I see it, this is different because we are helpless to do anything except pray. Of course, I am not a scientist, and the only way I see out of this is divine intervention. Even if the spill can somehow be stopped, we can do nothing about the methane. This is the time more than ever before that we need to dig deep within ourselves and find the high spirits, the chardi kala, that is a part of us. It takes courage to look tragedy in the face and carry on without panic or depression.

And what caused all this? Of course it was British Petroleum cutting corners on safety to save money and increase profit. It was Pres. Clinton who authorised the deep sea drilling. It was Pres. George W. Bush who so favoured the oil interests and permitted a lack of oversight to allow BP not to follow the safety measures. It was Pres. Obama who did not immediately step in to correct this corruption from the previous administration. But it was also all of us who are dependent on petroleum, who refuse to cut back on our usage, we who demand more and more. In the end, if we had not demanded this oil, if we had lost our lust it, BP wouldn’t have been able to make the profit that drove them to build this rickety structure upon the rickety structure of our economy. So what now? We have learned why greed is such an evil thing. Whither our good, green beautiful earth?

I keep thinking about the ending of Dr. Strangelove. (A great movie. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend you see it while you still can.)





Remain in chardi kala, my dear brothers and sisters!


pictures:

the fire – United States Coast Guard (via Wikipedia)
dead fish – Sean Gardner (Reuters)
the pelicans – Charlie Riedel (AP)
the earth – courtesy of NASA

together

“religion” divides us…

spirituality brings us together…

god is not “religion”

…Oberon…

LBJ’s Daisy Commercial

The Guardians ???

The Restore America Plan

The Restore America Plan is a bold achievable strategy for behind-the-scenes peaceful reconstruction of the de jure institutions of government without controversy, violence or civil war. After consultation with high ranking members of the United States armed forces, the Plan is in the process of assembling the Guardians of the Free Republics and reinhabiting the De jure Grand Juries to:

Restore and reinhabit the de jure institutions of lawful government.

Terminate illicit corporations posing as legitimate governments, in particular the territorial jurisdiction United States Federal Corporation (corp. ref. 28 U.S.C. 3002) posing as the de jure United States of America.

Terminate all presumed powers of attorney to such corporations.

End the foreclosure nightmare (for borrowing against one’s own credit).

End tax prosecutions for resisting the transfer of private wealth to foreign banking cartels such as I.R.S. (former Puerto Rico Bureau of Taxation).

End street assaults against the sovereign People for failing to exhibit a State-issued confession of subject-class citizenship.

End all prosecutions which lack an injured party.

End admiralty prosecutions for kidnapping and other heinous crimes against mankind as “commercial crimes” against the corporate State under a contrived corporate color-of-law venue (corp. ref. 27 C.F.R. 72.11).

Terminate the intrusion of corporations posing as the state into every aspect of the People’s lives.

End the use of covert contracts such as Form 1040, car registrations, birth certificate applications, and bank signature cards which confess the signer to be a legal fiction subject of the United States Federal Corporation (“U.S. person”) that has waved his/her rights in favor of state-issued privileges.

End the use of deeds which classify the People as “tenants” on their own land, thereby transferring control to incorporated County registrars and tax assessors.

End the perversion of marriage into a commercial system of state-issued privileges through the so-called “marriage license” whereby incorporated “courts” presume the “right” to trespass on families and kidnap children.

End the hijacking of automobile ownership through DMV registrations which covertly exchange the divine rights of travel and ownership for the state-issued “privileges” of “driving” and “title.”

In place of all of the above, substitute sovereign identification, diplomatic immunity and sovereign passports to facilitate safe passage throughout the world free from corporate State molestation and terror.

Restore the People’s money and wealth from the banking institutions, war profiteers, and international loan sharks.

Instantly vest all mortgages, auto loans and personal business loans “issued” by members of the Fed. The state shall hold no paper on, or debts against, the sovereign People, directly or through its agencies and licensed banking institutions.

Instantly end all non-consensual and unlawful taxation including all taxes on the sacred rights of labor and privacy.

Empower and inspire the sovereign People to righteousness through such renewed abundance.

Issue orders to the military and police powers to enforce the Peoples’ divine rights of birth.

Reabsorb all de facto actors into lawful de jure capacity.

End the perverse act of requiring the People to pray to “courts” as is now required under corporate rules and traditions.

Restore the de jure judicial institutions including the district court of the United States and the one supreme Court.

Quietly mirror the strategies of 1933 thereby using their (our) institutions, military and public officials to undo eighty years of subterfuge without provoking alarm, controversy or armed conflict.

Return the military and law enforcement institutions to proper and lawful de jure sovereign authority from the clutches of corporate actors.

Forgive all corporate actors who repent for their State-sponsored crimes against mankind. Remove the recidivists from office.

Do all of the above, and more, peacefully, discreetly, quietly and honorably, behind the scenes, without public proclamations or provocative actions against a general public that is mostly unaware of the hijacking of their free de jure American republics, and their hapless media.

(read more)

The Day Democracy Died

I know who killed JFK

http://www.jfkmurdersolved.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Action_(film)

The Custodian

I’m a custodian

I clean up dirt

It’s a dirty world

somebody’s got to do it

I’m cleaning up around here

Who Killed The Electric Car?

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